Best Way to Partition SSD for Puppies?

[number77]

Hello
I have a Dell E6230 with 120gb SSD. I have one ntfs partition 60GB with win10 on. Its a new installation so Id like to get it right. I want to run Xenial64, Fossapup64 and another puppy as I fancy, all frugal.What is the best way to go about this, separate partitions or not and different puppies in directories. I would like to get away from no free space problems.
Help would be appreciated.
Thanks
number77

[rockedge]

@number77 you have then a spare 60 G that can be partitioned and formatted as an ext4 partition?

[number77]

@number77 you have then a spare 60 G that can be partitioned and formatted as an ext4 partition?

Yes, so all puppies in separate directories on the same partition.
Thats easy

[rockedge]

boots with UEFI? Can legacy BIOS be enabled?

[mikeslr]

Not sure what you mean by 'with 120gb SSD'...'one ntfs partition 60GB'. What's on the other 60GBs? Or does the 120gb SSD have 'Unallocated' Space? If so, how much? And into how many partitions has the drive already been divided?

Commonly, the hard-drive of a 'factory fresh' Windows computer will already have 3 NTFS partitions: (1) a small boot-partition; (2) a recovery partition of about 10 Gbs; and (3) the rest of the hard-drive being used by the Windows OS, its applications and the data files created using them.

The best practice is that if you have to create new partitions you use Windows applications to do that. Don't do anything to the boot-partition. You can copy the recovery partition to a USB-Key, then delete it from the hard-drive creating additional Unallocated space. Basically the only partition you work with to create one or more partitions for Linux is the one noted as (3) above.

With such partition being 'factory fresh' it hasn't had the opportunity to become fragmented. If it isn't, see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 00c4ec702a and do that first.

Then follow steps 1 thru 3 here, https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-u ... ft-windows to create 'Unallocated' Space. Don't do steps 4 and 5: you'll use gparted under a Puppy on a USB-Stick to create Linux partitions out of the unallocated space.

Keep this in mind in 'shrinking' the drive: Leave it large enough to install any applications you may want to run under Windows PLUS 20% +/- of all the space you'll need for Windows, Windows programs, and the datafiles they'll create. Windows needs Storage Space to do things. For example, suppose you want to upgrade an existing program. Before the current version is deleted Windows will need space for the downloaded compressed upgrade and to decompress it. And even after deleting the old version, some residual files and or fragmented space will be left.

Edit: When you Shut down Windows, make certain it's a complete Shut-down; not just a hibernation. Thanks, cobaka, viewtopic.php?p=108025#p108025

Likely the drive has been partitioned using the MS-DOS scheme. If so, there can only be 4 primary partitions. I don't recommend creating an extended partition with multiple logical partitions. So, if you did not delete the 'Recovery Partition', you can only have one Linux partition. If you did, you can create two.

[mikewalsh]

@mikeslr :-

Might not be quite that easy, Mike. If I understand correctly, what 'free' space Windows doesn't use on its main partition tends to become 'populated', over time, with 'Shadow Volume' copies of itself......

Again - if I understand correctly; it's been a decade since I used "the Beast" - those Shadow Volume copies have to be 'removed' before you can use the Windows disk management tools to perform any shrinking.

I may be wrong. I'm happy to be corrected, 'cos I really AM "none the wiser" where MyCrudSoft is concerned.

T'other Mike.

[trawglodyte]

I can tell you one way, Whether it's the best way or not.... depends on what you want. This way will allow you to have all your OS's in a grub menu when you start your computer or reboot. Possible downside is you'll need another Linux distro installed in addition to the pups. This other Linux distro will require 15-30G.

You might as well make a VentoyUSB and put your puppy .iso's, other linux distro of your choice .iso, and Windows 10 .iso on it. I would also get the gparted .iso if it was me but you can also use one of the pups to run gparted from USB.

Use either a pup or the gparted.iso by booting the Ventoy to run gparted.

Delete every partition on the drive and create a new GPT partiion table. Then create the following partitions.

1024mb fat32 EFI (this is large for an EFI but I have run into some Linux distros which will not install without 1024 EFI partition)
8G swap - assuming your Dell has 8G RAM, if it has 4G than make this 4G
30G ext4 - This is for the linux distro of your choice and is large enough for any of them. I can recommend MX Linux latest release if you want a medium-weight distro and in that case this could be 15-20G.
60G ntfs - Windows 10
20G ext3 - Puppy (I read somewhere ext3 is better for Puppy and it's what I'm using, but ext4 is probably fine too) this will give you room for a few pups which will each be in their own folder on the partition.

So the logical question - Are these partitions large enough? It really depends on you, they are large enough to have browsers and normal apps. If you plan on saving a lot of large video files to the SSD, using large modern games, adding a bazillion apps and packages etc... then no. If you went with MX Linux you could make that partition 20G and the Puppy partition 30G and that would insure you would have a good amount of free space. I just hesitate to recommend that because you may wind up wanting to try some other Linux distro and find 20G isn't sufficient.

What this way does do is make sure you can have the linux distro of your choice control the grub menu. Then you can add menuentry's for all your puppy's to /etc/grub.d/40_custom file in that OS and go to any OS you want whenever you start or reboot without going into BIOS settings.

[bugnaw333]

Agree with traw...

But I prefer to split the 60g NTFS to 40/10. 40g for windows data and 10g for the win10 system.

[mikeslr]

I would agree that trawglodyte's approach is the most flexible: uses GPT partitioning rather than ms-dos. But where does the Windows 10 .iso to be included in the USB-Ventoy setup come from? If you restructure the drive from ms-dos to GPT, you wipe the existing Windows install. I don't think there's a way to convert the Window's recovery partition into an ISO. But I could be wrong. And computers, AFAIK, are no longer sold with installation disks. Can a free, downloadable Windows 10 ISO be found and Used? Registered? With the credentials of that Windows version deployed to the computer as purchased which you already have the legal right to use? and if so, how?

[trawglodyte]

Where does the Windows 10 .iso to be included in the USB-Ventoy setup come from?

You can download a Windows 10 .iso here --> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwar ... ndows10ISO. I have a Windows 10 PRO product key I bought for $10 on Ebay that I've used repeatedly for both Windows 10 and Windows 11 activation, but I want to say you can also currently use the Home edition endlessly without entering a product key. I'm not 100% certain of that, but I do know I have used them both for weeks without activating.

For this gentleman's case, best practice would be to save your product key, and the email and password associated with your Microsoft account (if you have one) to use in the fresh install.

One other thought that crossed my mind is that a Dell E6230 has an SD card slot. A fella could probably use a 32G or 64G SD for his Puppy's rather than a partition on the SSD. That would insure PLENTY of free space, and (correct me if I'm wrong) only mean a few seconds longer to load into RAM on bootup, and some extra seconds when you do a pupsave (assuming pupmode 13 use). Although I've never done it this way I'm fairly sure you can still use the menuentry method I talked about to list them in the grub menu and boot them. Might be an option to consider?

[mikeslr]

Thanks, trawglodyte, for the good advice particularly about the Windows ISO. But I like the idea of deploying Puppys to an SD card even more. Current price of a SanDisk (reputable manufacturer) 256 Gb SD card is $27 on Amazon, 64Gb for about $10.

If I'm not mistaken, however, not all computers can boot from an SD Card with a boot-loader on that card. But I think with the boot-loader on the Internal Drive, a listing in grub.cfg of Puppys on the SD Card and the Card plugged in, things should be workable and fairly easy to setup:

Install your choice of Major Distro to the Internal Drive choosing the Dual-boot option. Then edit the grub2 that Linux will install to include listings of Puppys on the SD Card; or Ventoy.

Or am I mistaken, or have I over complicated the situation?

By the way. I've 'inherited' a Windows 10 computer. So my interest here isn't simply academic.

[mikewalsh]

@mikeslr :-

My heavily-customized all-time "favourite" 32-bitzer, Slacko 560, initially got installed to a 2 GB cheapo SD card when I finished re-building it with upgraded glibc and the kernel from DPup 'Stretch'. Running in a USB SD card-reader, it booted quite happily using the Grub4DOS bootloader installed to the card.....

Much in this scenario depends on what the card-slot in question is set-up to allow. And, to a lesser extent, the attributes of the card itself, bearing in mind that most of these are nowadays built specifically for high-speed capture & transfer of RAW camera images.

I doubt they were ever envisaged as being used for a computer boot drive!

T'other Mike.

[oldaolgeezer]

NTFS format and no boot flag but bootable via UEFI

I have been putting Puppy Linux on a "new to me" Dell Latitude 5490 laptop. (It came
with no memory nor any storage drives.)

I got some DD4 memory and an inexpensive Micron PCIe Gen4 NVMe 256 GB internal
Solid State drive and put it into the NVMe M.2 2230 socket and formated
almost all of it as NTFS (just one partition, I left about a small 4 megabyte
partition at the front unformated.)

rockedge asked the question: boots with UEFI? Can legacy BIOS be enabled?
viewtopic.php?p=107287#p107287

I expected to use this PC with legacy BIOS booting as I normally do,
but I had difficulty booting a USB flash drive with menu.lst that works
on my other old PC's.

In frustration, without making any changes to my NVMe 256 GB internal
Solid State drive, I tried a bootable UEFI USB flash drive and got a lot further.

I found that I could set my PC's BIOS to booting UEFI with a grub.cfg file,
a /EFI/boot folder with bootx64.efi on my Solid State drive, it could
boot either my BOOKWORM or my fossapup64_9.5 files in their folders.
No boot flag and with no USB drives plugged in.

Perhaps many people know this already, but it surprised me.

(I don't expect to put Windows on this PC, Windows might decide to "correct"
the drive's unexpected format and/or contents.)

[number77]

boots with UEFI? Can legacy BIOS be enabled?

Legacy bios is enabled and it does boot UEFI I think as Fossapup boots.
I need a simple approach I leave the windows partition alone as I very rarely use. My query is really about the other 60gb space. As i say I do not want complication as I am a beginner. At present I have four partitions with an os on each. Is it better to have one large 60gb partition with other OSs on it. IE 60gb windows and 60gb puppies. I use gparted at will.

[number77]

Not sure what you mean by 'with 120gb SSD'...'one ntfs partition 60GB'. What's on the other 60GBs? Or does the 120gb SSD have 'Unallocated' Space? If so, how much? And into how many partitions has the drive already been divided?

I have just installed win10 on the 60gb partition. I only use win10 to run exact audio copy. The rest of the ssd can have any partition with gparted as its unallocated at present. I use two main puppies and play with or try anything else I fancy.

[bigpup]

Take the unallocated space on the SSD and make a partition out of it, formatted ext 3 or 4.

Install all the Puppy versions you want on this partition, with each one it's own frugal install.

Now to get a boot loader setup with entries to boot everything.

Grub2config is suppose to do it.
viewtopic.php?t=3360

Run this from a Puppy version you have in some way booted the computer with.

When you run it to install the boot loader.
Install it to the first partition on the SSD.
So it is the main boot loader booting the SSD.

It is suppose to make a boot menu that will have entries for all the different Puppy versions.
Also an entry to select to boot Windows.

Note:
To make it easy for the Grub2config install process to find all the Puppy frugal installs.
Best if the name of the folder the Puppy version is in, is named the same as the Puppy version in it.
Example:
Fossapup64 9.5 is a frugal install in folder named: fossapup64 9.5

If you do manual frugal installs.
Non of the boot loader stuff in the Puppy version ISO needs to be in the frugal install.
Grub2config is doing all the boot loader functions.
Note: The save files are added after making a save folder.
Example:

Screenshot.jpg (24.61 KiB) Viewed 684 times

[number77]

Take the unallocated space on the SSD and make a partition out of it, formatted ext 3 or 4.

Install all the Puppy versions you want on this partition, with each one it's own frugal install.

Thanks bigpup, I am working on that. The modified grub2 bootloader config looks good as its always asked fo a different partition from ext4 in the past.

[bigpup]

The modified grub2 bootloader config looks good as its always asked fo a different partition from ext4 in the past.

The boot loader it installs needs to go on the first partition of the drive.
Which will happen if you use this Grub2config program.

If Windows OS is staying on the drive with it's boot loader.
Do nothing to any of the Windows stuff or partitions it may have made.

Grub2config is just going to add it's boot loader and take over initial boot of the drive.
It will make a boot menu with entries to boot any operating systems on the drive.
It will have a boot menu entry to select to boot Windows.

When you first start Grub2config program click on the help.

Read it and it will tell you what you need to do.

This help is very good at explaining how to use it.

If you only have one internal drive.
Choose it as place to install.
Select it as only drive to search.
If unsure of what boot loader type (MBR or UEFI) just select both to install.
The computers Bios will figure out which one to use when it boots.

Let the program complete the install.

Any time you install a new Puppy version frugal install.
Just run Grub2config to have it update the boot menu.

[number77]

Thanks bigpup.

[number77]

Thanks everyone for the help. It is sorted now, three partitions. win10 on one ntfs, other puppies on another and one small spare. Grub2 gave me problems as I am using ext4 for the rest and it had to install to fat32 or ext3. So I used grub4dos which seemed fine
Thanks again for help
number77

[trawglodyte]

@number77 I'm glad you got it sorted out and have a good amount of free space. I couldn't get pups to boot on my computer and didn't know it could work that way. I thought it was because I have gpt partition table and uefi-only, but maybe it was some other mistake I made?

I like the idea of deploying Puppys to an SD card even more. Current price of a SanDisk (reputable manufacturer) 256 Gb SD card is $27 on Amazon, 64Gb for about $10.

If I'm not mistaken, however, not all computers can boot from an SD Card with a boot-loader on that card. But I think with the boot-loader on the Internal Drive, a listing in grub.cfg of Puppys on the SD Card and the Card plugged in, things should be workable and fairly easy to setup:

I like the idea too, if I had an SD card slot I would try it right now. For the pups on my nvme what works is putting them in a folder (FossaPup64_9.5) on my partition (Label=Puppy UUID=eea65cbd-8683-4c1a-850a-99888a7a8324). I don't do anything with bootloader grub4dos, nothing. just put the Puppy files, vmlinuz, and initrd.gz in a folder. Then I go back to the Linux distro which controls my grub and add a menuentry to /etc/grub.d/40_custom file like this

menuentry "FossaPup64_9.5" {
search --fs-uuid --set eea65cbd-8683-4c1a-850a-99888a7a8324
linux /FossaPup64_9.5/vmlinuz acpi_osi=Linux net.ifnames=0 pmedia=usbflash pdrv=Puppy psubdir=/FossaPup64_9.5 pfix=fsck
initrd /FossaPup64_9.5/initrd.gz
}

Replace every time it says FossaPup64_9.5 with what you named your folder. Find the UUID and Label with <blkid> in terminal.

After you save the 40_custom with new menu entry, do <sudo update-grub>

When you reboot it will be in the grub menu. You may have to scroll down to find it.

Will it boot when you select it? I don't know. lol. I just don't know much about SD cards.

[mikewalsh]

@trawglodyte :-

Talking of this stuff, I did a normal frugal install of Fossapup64 9.5 to a 32 GB SanDisk Ultra SDHC1 card I snagged out of Tesco, night before last. (Just £6; how cheap is that? And at that, Tesco will still be making a profit on it...)

It's 120 MB/s read speed, shows a "1" inside what looks like a bucket, and a "10" inside a circle. (Don't ask me what that lot means; I remember back when an SD card was just an SD card.....nowadays, they have all these different levels & types of classifications. But then, they also now have half-terabyte (512GB) cards; 15 years ago, if you could find a 16GB card, that was the "big daddy"!

A-hem. I digress.

So; a small FAT32 partition (I have to do it this way, 'cos this is a UEFI box. Even if booting via legacy, it still wants the actual bootloader on a FAT32 partition, thank you very much!) Then a main 20 GB Ext3 one (Fossa lives here), some unformatted space, and a 3 GB swap partition.

I set this one up with Grub2config. I've always been a stalwart Grub4DOS user, but I tried the former the other day with another USB set-up of Fossa & it seemed to work OK.......booting from both 'legacy' AND UEFI.

===========================

Here's the best bit. I use these with an el-cheapo, "generic" no-name USB card reader I picked up in our local "pound shop" at least 15 years ago, maybe longer. Haven't a clue who made it, or even where it came from.......but it boots Linux distros JUST fine. You'd never believe it to look at it; it's scuffed to hell and back; I've lost track of the number of times I've dropped it over the years - it's all held together with insulating tape - and looks a right mess. BUT.....

.....it just "works"! (And keeps on working...)

(shrug...)

Mike.